Musings of a theatre nerd... and professional

This week's blog is a bit different than my traditional experience/reflection style, but I think it's going to be relevant all the same.

This year I decided to take on a personal goal of writing as many holiday cards out to whomever I had an address for and who supplied an address in a two week long campaign on social media platforms. Now, I'm an AVID Facebook'er but once I leave that realm, I'm sort of over social media, twitter, linked-in, blah..blah...blah... I just rarely use anything else.

So, I began my journey a few days prior to Thanksgiving. I created a social media event and invited the most amount of people my profile would let me (500, when I have well over 1800 people I'm in contact with) SO, I turned to posting every few days about sending me the address in a private format or public, didn't matter, I just wanted to spread the holiday cheer.

Quickly, I had received nearly 250 responses from all over the globe, and I set out to work on writing up and sending out these cards. I can safely say- that every day I have at least one last straggler coming in, but I love it. I've sent nearly 281 cards, and received a bunch in return! It brings an absolute joy to my face and my eyes to see my mailbox plump full of holiday cheer. So, when someone responds to me via social media that they've received my correspondence, I put the challenge out to them- continue to spread that joy and cheer to someone you would not have normally done that for today.

I think sometimes we forget what a personal touch, an extra smiley face scrawled next to impossible-to-read handwriting can do, it can bring joy, it can bring tears of happiness or sadness, it can also inspire, and bring about a change.

So, my readers, this is where you come in. Have you spread holiday cheer to someone you would never ever spread joy to? Have you stopped to sing a merry tune in the middle of a metro car just because? I know, it's hard, and I don't even have the balls to bust out a tune on the metro, but, I think with enough folks doing it, maybe we can effect change in this community/country/world. One step at a time I suppose. right?

PS- Who says they have to be holiday tunes? Bust out some Frank Sinatra or something equally epic.